Hialeah leaders announced at a city council meeting Wednesday the withdrawal of plans to annex a portion of Brownsville.
According to Mayor Esteban Bovo, there was an error in the initial map design that began the controversy over annexation.
"This thing became very very political and it should have never gotten political," Bovo said. "There was never any intent on trying to damage the integrity of a historic neighborhood. On the contrary, we were talking about an industrial area that has very few inhabitants and in fact, none of the inhabitants in those areas would tell you that they live in Brownsville. But for the sake of working with our communities and other partners at this point, we are no longer interested.
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This was welcome news from Brownsville community leaders and the NAACP, who were very vocal against the process.
The groups say the rich history of the historically Black neighborhood was at stake as well as the economy of the area. The proposed area was primarily industrial.
“We’re going be trying to look forward to looking at ways we can secure our borders a little better to make it a little harder for folks to annex our community, and if that becomes a discussion with any municipality in the future, we’re hoping they will come to us first so they can see what we want before they start spending dollars on consultants," said Kenneth Kilpatrick of the Brownsville Civic Neighborhood Association.
"We did it!" Brownsville Civic Neighborhood Association said in a Facebook post. "The community stood strong and defended the history and economy of Brownsville!"
